Timetable
fit:
In the last few classes we have been focusing a lot on improving
the students listening and speaking skills, so I felt students
would benefit by spending more time looking at some grammatical
structures. In the last class students were introduced to
some examples of the passive from a listening text and then
looked at how the the different tenses of the passive are
formed, they also completed a transformation exercise. In
this class we are continuing by looking more closely at why
and when the passive is used, using a reading text, and in
the following class I aim to give students a summary of today's
text using a dictogloss; in this way the students will be
reviewing much of the language from this class. Therefore,
the idea of recycling is present in the class, keeping with
the need for a syllabus to be cyclical. In the hour before
the observation my colleague will have introduced the topic
of cinema and the Oscars. I hope the topic of this class will
provide a link in the theme of the class.

Assumed
knowledge:
I expect many of the students will have some knowledge of
the topic, as there are many magazines and television programmes
on the topic, and I hope they will be sufficiently interested
in the subject to speak about it.

Students have a fairly clear idea of the forms of the passive
and can recognise the structure, partly as they are the same
in Spanish, but may not be so clear on the uses, or employ
the passive with consistent accuracy. I am assuming that the
text will not present any real difficulties for students.
These students are very keen to develop their speaking skills
so I expect them to participate in the speaking stage.

Anticipated
problems & solutions:
The text chosen should not be particulary demanding as a reading
text as it is reasonably short and clearly organised, however,
students may be unfamiliar with some of the vocabulary items.
I hope to solve this by pre-teching the items I suspect students
may not know and which are also not easily guessed from the
context.

The stronger students may already have a degree of familiarity
with some of the uses of the passive, although they may not
use them in either their own writing or when speaking. I hope
the grammar analysis stage of the lesson will allow them to
draw directly on what knowledge they have, while at the same
time not proving too difficult for the weaker students. Students
may not be able to think of many reasons why the passive is
used in their answers to the questions in stage 3, I will
monitor and try to help, and in the feedback stage students
will be sharing their ideas and I will help clarify the uses,
using concept questions and writing on the board. The back
of the handout also has a grammar summary.

The exercise where students classify the examples according
to their use may prove to be confusing as with some examples
the distinction is not so clear cut; we often use the passive
for more than one reason, for example, to move the theme to
the beginning of the sentence and also when the agent is obvious,
therefore I will point this out to them before they begin;
the overiding aim is to allow them to see the main uses at
this stage. The feedback stage may prove difficult if students
have not been able to complete it successfully, if this is
the case I will attempt to clarify their doubts, and point
out that we will be looking at the passive in future classes,
and that they are not expected to be able to know everything
about the passive in just one class.

When asking students to translate some sentences I am slightly
worried that they may revert to Spanish, so I will monitor
and remind students that they do not need to speak in Spanish
to complete the exercise.

The students may feel that there has been a lot of reading
and writing in the class, therefore I hope the final speaking
activity will go some way to giving them some fluency practice,
and to round of the class on a lighter note.

Class
profile:
The class is a general adult English class. The class takes
place twice a week for two hours and began in the middle of
January. There are now twelve students on the course, some
of them have been in the class since the beginning of the
course, whilst two students Gabriel and Mayte began at the
beginning of March, and Antonio only began two weeks ago.
At the start of the course we carried out a needs analysis,
from which we found that many of them shared similar reasons
for taking the course; they wanted to get a lot of practice
to improve, firstly their speaking skills, and then their
listening comprehension, as these are the two areas they have
most difficulties with. It seems that as the course does not
lead to any exam and, perhaps, that students have had classes
where the focus was on a structural syllabus they want to
take advantage to really practise these two skills. Most of
the students have also mentioned the fact that they may need
English for work, indicating more instrumental motivation,
though only Mayte is currently in this situation: she is looking
for a job at the moment and has sent a letter of application
in English.

Nerea-
She is studying enviromental sicence at University and needs
English for her studies and for work in the future, she can
seem slightly shy at times but she participates well in all
the activities and seems to use grammatical structures fairly
well.

Soraya-
She is also studying at university and will need English for
a job in the future.
She is strong in all the skills and as the rest of the students
particularly likes doing listening activities and speaking
practice.

Carmen-
She is the oldest member of the class and is a housewife.
She needs English because she teaches young children, in her
needs analysis she commented that she would like to focus
on speaking activities as she finds this the most difficult
area. She does seem to enjoy speaking but is sometimes concerned
about her accuracy. She has an excellent control over grammatical
structures at this level.

Irene-
She studies at university as well. She is very keen, though
she is one of the weaker students in the class,especially
her listening comprehension. She also has more difficulty
with structures and pronunciation. However, she has mentioned
that she thinks her level is below that of the other students,
though she prefers this as she is able to learn from her peers.

Victoria-
She mentions that she wants to improve her English to be able
to read books and to watch original version movies, she also
spoke about wanting to travel a lot and therefore English
would come in handy. She is strong talker, though she makes
frequent errors of syntax and lexis.

Jordi-
He has just finished his degree in Business and is presently
finishing his project. He is one of the strongest students
in the class, in so far as his use of structures and vocabulary
is concerned. Generally he is a quiet student, who likes to
listen and participate rather than take the lead in group
or class discussions. He has mentioned that he would like
the listening texts to be more challenging.

Gabriel-
Gabriel is from Colombia and is now living in Spain, he is
presently studying for his doctorate. He participates well
in the class and is not shy to talk, however, he makes numerous
gramatical errors, seemingly caused by negative transfer.

Maria
Teresa- She is very keen to improve her English as she hopes
that it may help her find a job. She often brings a list of
questions to the class concerning her doubts about grammar,
vocabulary, or expressions, at times she stops doing an activity
to ask the teacher one of these questions, therefore, I have
had to ask her to wait until the end of the class, where we
can spend five minutes to help her clear up her doubts rather
than interrupt the class.

Antonio-
Antonio has been in the class for two weeks. He seems to be
very keen and very talkative, he participates very well in
all the activities and is quite strong in all skills.

Elsa-
She is perhaps the strongest student in the class, she makes
very few errors and is very fluent and confident when talking,
I sometimes feel she may find the level of the class not challenging
enough for her.

Cristina-
She is presently studying at university and needs English
for instrumental reasons. She is very enthusiastic and has
been improving, however, I feel she needs to spend more time
working on both her level of vocabulary and grammar.

Elena-
She is new to the class, she seems to be settling in well,
and is of a similar level to the rest.

Lseeon
rationale:
This lesson's focus is on the structure of the passive, I
have decided to focus today's class on grammar as much of
the coursework we are doing has placed an important emphasis
on both listening and speaking skills; most of the students
have talked about their interest in improving these skills.
However, it is clear that many students still need to work
on structural areas if they are to avoid fossilisation, therefore,
in trying to maintain the communicative value of the class
and at the same time give students some useful practice in
manipulating grammar I will be using a skills focus to present
the items.
I often feel that helping learners take in new language can
be made easier if we can get their attention using material
that engages the student while at the same time motivates
them, in this sense I hope the topic of the class, the text
and the visual aids will do this; the topic is quite controversial
in Spain at the moment with so many television programmes
and magazines dedicated to gossip. I also felt it necessary
to provide a link between the two hours of the class, and
try to follow on from the first hour rather than change track
completely.

The text is taken from the 'Inside Out' Intermediate coursebook,
it is fairly short and not beyond the learners level. An important
aspect if we want to focus students attention on a particular
language item is that the surrounding language should not
impede the student from being able to see how the structure
is used, therefore I have made some slight changes to the
text mainly changing vocabulary items as they may have distracted
students attention away from focusing on the general meaning,
and I also did not want to get bogged down with too much new
vocabulary. In the pre-reading stage I intend to arouse students
interest and schema in the article by discussing the idea
of paparazzi and tabloids, I may also mention the court case
Catherine Zeta-Jones is involved in, thus, providing a type
of link from the previous class, I intend to pre-teach some
vocabulary items using situations, and then give students
a matching exercise as reinforcement which will serveas a
vocabulary record, many of the items will come up again in
stages 3 and 4 and, perhaps, brought out in the final discussion.

In the reading stage I have decided only to do a more specific
comprehension task and leave out a gist reading, this is because
I assume that the text should not pose too many difficulties
for the students. Students will compare their answers so helping
each other.

In the third stage students we will begin by reviewing the
passive form, before they decide why the passive is used;
this serves as revision from the last class. After this students
will see some examples from the text and discuss why they
have been used, I will then elicit or lead students to see
the reasons why, and write the three main reasons on the board,
the grammar summary on the back will serve as a record. Students
will then think about the use of the examples from the text
and perhaps place sentences under the reasons for using the
passive, this will serve as reinforcement of the uses and
as a grammar record, however, I will tell them that sometimes
there may be more than one reason. Above all, this lesson
aims to raise students awareness of the passive rather than
expect immediate production, as I have mentioned I feel this
to be a gradual process and students will need to 'notice'
it more times, however, I hope that this class will encourage
students to think more about why the passive has been used
when they come across it, and in future classes I will be
incorporating activites where students will need to write
using the passive. I would also point out that with this particular
group the idea of asking them to discuss grammar rules is
not one we have focused on a lot, however, when we have they
seemed to find it more challenging than merely being presented
with rules.

The controlled practice activity aims to highlight the differences
or similiarites between the students own language and English,
the sentences to be translated are from the text, therefore
they will also be recycling some of the vocabulary. I have
chosen this type of exercise, as it may help students to 'notice'
more about the passive, translation also seems to be a natural
process when thinking about many grammatical structures; something
students seem to be doing all the time. This writing stage
also allows for important planning time and does not ask for
immediate oral production of the structure.

The final stage may allow students to use the passive in their
discussion, but more importantly it will give them some oral
fluency practice, helping to achieve a balance of skills across
the lesson. In the following class students will be reviewing
the text and they will also be looking at a letter of opinion
referring to libel actions and the popular press's invasion
of privacy, and then, to practise the passive they will be
writing letters in reply to the article. Finally I intend
to give the students some homework and a grammar summary to
help reinforce the structure in this class.